In his autobiography, composer John Adams tells the grand finale of Grand Pianola Music: ‘It starts with a long and sustained seventh dominant chord throbbing and vibrating for sixty bars before flowing into a virtual Niagara of piano arpeggios. What follows is an absolutely familiar melody, a kind of Ur-Melodie. You think you’ve already heard it, but you can not remember where or when. It’s actually an original theme ‘[John Adams, Hallelujah Junction, EDT]. This passage came to my mind when I listened to Variety of Rhythm, a suite composed by the Swedish guitarist Samuel Hällkvist. A study of listening to rhythm and auditory perceptions, managed in a fashion similar way to the way we study visual illusions mechanisms, such as those painted on the cover. And that takes us into a world of archaeologies of sounds, at any moment we recognize Ur-Melodies – in this case more Ur-Rhythms– that we do not remember to remember, as in the case of the example of John Adams.

Variety of Rhythm is the fourth solo work by the Swedish-born, but Denmark-resident guitarist Samuel Hällkvist. It is also the third in the ‘Variety of’ series following Variety of Loud (2012) and Variety of Live (2015). Listening to his discography we can see a different direction, an experiment focusing on a different aspect comparing a record to the previous one. He uses a preferably clean guitar base, combining it along a work focused on rhythms and polyrhythms and developing melody and harmony in a way functional to the rhythmic development of the piece. He gives only a few solos and prefers to work on the structure of the pieces, using sounds ranging from the American jazz of Bill Frisell to math rock, Pink Floyd’s psychedelic, avant-garde, electronics, Asian music, complex progressive instrumental -never lavish, even sometimes subtly ironic, i.e. in style of Mats / Morgan Band. No surprise Samuel worked with Morgan Agren, as well as mentioning the collaborations, among others, with Pat Mastelotto, David Torn – who makes an appearance also in this work- and trumpeter Yazz Ahmed, whose Le Saboteusewas among the most interesting releases in 2017. And he is a regular member of the Swedish veteran proggers Isildurs Bane, who worked with Steve Hogarth last year for Colours Not Found in Nature.

For this work he assembled a team of 12 musicians and recorded parts of the suite between Scandinavia, Paris, Japan, Antwerp, Portugal and the United States. Each of the teams in the various locations (see below the tracklist) has a part of the total 43 minutes of the piece, which are developed without interruption in three main sections of written composition, developed in a structure of sonata-form of presentation/recapitulation and interspersed with improvised segments. The beginning of the first part, Double Adagio, is lead by Qarin Wikström‘s vocals together with Meshuggah‘s Dick Lövgren basslines. They build the first ostinato on the beat of metronome brought by the vibraphone of Kumiko Takara, while drums adds the first polyrhythm. As Hällkvist describes in the Variety of site, which has been created to explain the piece’s musical analysis and its construction, we hear no more than three chords repeated for multiple beats while all the instruments dialogue between a rhythm of 3 and 7. We feel a dancing and cheerful gamelan, above which Hällkvist builds intense lines with guitar lead distortion full of reverberations up to four minutes, when drums stop for the last final intro chords.

Behind Variety of Rhythm there is a strong vision to guide the composition of this work, which is linked to the perception cognitive process. Gestalt psychology analyzed in depth the perception, placing it for the first time at the center of this discipline. In 1912, Max Wertheimer, while studying visual illusions, developed the concept of form, which represents the unitary organization of elements at cognitive level that our senses received individually. The perception scene is already full of the relationships between the elements we are sensing, such as in the experiment of two close lamps that turn on and off quickly: our eyes tends to perceive them as a single lamp. Our eye, as well as our ear, is able to grasp the interactions between the elements that occur outside the perceptions field. The visual example of this mental process is hinted by Hällkvist himself with the title of one of the main pieces, The Necker Cube, a figure created to work on the ambiguity of the cognitive illusion. Our senses collect more than what is in the sum of the individual parts.

Hällkvist follows this path to develop the relationship between the rhythms in his work. At any time the listening act rebounds like a rubber band between the various levels of the piece through a double circuit: on one hand the dialogue between the beats, meant as meters, on the other those between the rhythms, meant as complex constructions of accents and quotations of signs and cultural references. For example, in the short improvised interlude glued between the first movement and the second, Tete-a-tete / Blivet, which begins around 5 minutes, while not perceiving beats, the listener continues to bring the rhythm within him/herself while listening. Second part begins with a slow and psychedelic carpet on which Hällkvist’s guitar and Liesbeth Lambrecht‘s violin bring a theme out of phase that goes up and down between the higher and lower register. The drums comes out after about two minutes leaving room for delay guitar lines, using a well-known 1980s David Gilmour effect. He chooses a overused effect chosen by many guitarists, making a very risky move: instead, Samuel builds a relaxing and spatial moment. Pete Drungle‘s keyboards, bass and drums are coming back in creating a growing tension while moving through the whole chromatic scale. We are on a journey starting from Pink Floyd until the early Porcupine Tree. A moment worth the price of the ticket.

At the end of the part, vibraphone brings an obsessive theme on the same beat that we listened on the previous moments and we still feel in ourselves, then the following improvisation by David Torn builds an intense soundscape, which recalls the sounds of his last solo on ECM, Only Sky. The third part begins around 26 minutes like the previous one, with a few notes brought by the vibraphone dialoguing with the drums. This time music swings from quarters to triplets and it changes the underlying chord at each change of rhythm. The rhythms is slow while we hear all possible interactions between different patterns. When our ear focuses on the similitudes with minimalism, here there is a reminiscence of gamelan or a pentatonic referring to oriental music or prog rock or American folk.

Listening to Variety of Rhythm takes place at a level deeper than just listening. We perceive an underlying development of the song, hidden behind the the cognitive illusions. It is not a trick, but rather a real dialogue between the rhythms within the work, in which the listener takes an active part by finding new details for each listening.